Here's an ignorant question: Do I need to pre-soak the felts in gear oil, or wet them in any way? Or do you just put them on dry?:rasta:

Uhh.........um...........I've never heard of doing that, just put them on dry. They'll soak up the grease from the knuckle anyways.

Good enough for me. Thanks (again), Shane.

Back to the garage...

Originally posted by AJJinAK
Good enough for me.

I did mine dry, but I did smooth out the surface of the knuckle surface. Did that and had on grease leakage ouf of the seals after 2-3 years of use.

before you put the felts on make sure the knuckle surface is nice and smooth, i wish i did this when i had mine apart last time, well worth it. As far as presoakin the felts goes, the felts should never be touching gear oil anyway, so why would you soak them now? The axle seals keep the oil in the axle, separate from the grease, and the felts just keep the grease in the knuckles. I KNOW you replace the oil seals.....

If the surface of the balls on your axle are pitted, I know KLF used JB Weld to fill them in, then ground or sanded them smooth on his....

Originally posted by Cracker
If the surface of the balls on your axle are pitted, I know KLF used JB Weld to fill them in, then ground or sanded them smooth on his....

Yes, this worked AWESOME. I've got very smooth balls now... (hehe... he said "balls"... hehehe) :D :D

I used a popsickle stick to smear the stuff on, just keep scraping the excess off as it starts to stiffen up. You gotta give the JB Weld a few days to get good and solid, then I used a flat file and emory paper to file/sand them nice and smooth. It still clogged the file a lot, had to keep cleaning it out, but it worked great.

I did smear some grease on the balls when I was putting in the felts, but otherwise put everything in dry.